We’re excited to confirm that Myles de Bastion will be performing and giving a talk at CyborgCamp!

Myles de Bastion is an Artistic Director, Musician and Creative-altruist who develops technology and art installations that enables sound to be experienced as light and vibration. His work has appeared in the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry, Portland Art Museum, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art and on the Jimmy Kimmel Live! Show. He has built large format installations for music festivals and Grammy-award winning jazz artist Esperanza Spalding.

A dual citizen of the UK and the United States, Myles grew up in England obtaining a Bachelor’s degree from University of Teesside (UK), focusing on computer science & visual art and was the chairman of the Musician’s Society for two years.

Myles often mentors Deaf & Hard-of-Hearing youth. He has taught workshops at Washington School for the Deaf (WA) Crestone School (OR) Austine School for the Deaf (VT) and at the world’s first Deaf Music Camp (MI), where he developed the curriculum and was responsible for the music and sound program.

In 2012 Myles moved to Portland OR and founded CymaSpace, a non-profit that facilitates arts & cultural events that are inclusive of the Deaf & Hard-of-Hearing, where Myles further developed his immersive technological and artistic works across multiple mediums. In 2015 Myles took his concepts into the commercial sector and founded Audiolux Devices, a technology company that now produces professional products featuring the synergy of light and sound.

In 2018 Myles spearheaded the Northwest Deaf Arts Festival (OR) providing Artistic & Technical Direction. At the event he also performed and presented The ikigai Machine; a multimedia experience comprising of a visual narrative with interactive art installations juxtaposed with live performances. The work tells the story of an inventor born in a silent world that has no air, the inventor builds a machine to restores air and in turn, helps to world to discover sound for the first time. Myles is developing The Ikigai Machine into a full, feature-length, touring production with the aim of presenting and performing at disability hubs and art institutions throughout the nation.

In tandem with his work at CymaSpace, Myles has received awards and support from Regional Arts & Culture Council, Oregon Arts Commission, Oregon Cultural Trust, Oregon Cultural Foundation and Randall Charitable Trust.

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be bringing my speech on Calm Technology home to Portland, Oregon at CyborgCamp this year. I’ve taken it on the road for 3 years, and I’m excited to kick off the morning’s events with a 20 minute talk on human time, machine time, culture and automation.

Designing Calm Technology
Our world is made of information that competes for our attention. What is needed? What is not? We cannot interact with our everyday life in the same way we interact with a desktop computer. The terms calm computing and calm technology were coined in 1995 by PARC Researchers Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown in reaction to the increasing complexities that information technologies were creating. Calm technology describes a state of technological maturity where a user’s primary task is not computing, but being human. The idea behind Calm Technology is to have smarter people, not things. Technology shouldn’t require all of our attention, just some of it, and only when necessary.

How can our devices take advantage of location, proximity and haptics to help improve our lives instead of get in the way? How can designers can make apps “ambient” while respecting privacy and security? This talk will cover how to use principles of Calm Technology to design the next generation of connected devices. We’ll look at notification styles, compressing information into other senses, and designing for the least amount of cognitive overhead.

We’re excited to announce that local restauranteur and entrepreneur Jeff Brown will be speaking at CyborgCamp! Jeff will be speaking about how AI, Deep Learning, Machine Learning and Robotics relates to food. He will also be providing a delicious and healthy lunch for all attendees and volunteers!

About Jeff

Jeff Brown is committed to responsible stewardship of resources, driving innovation, and preserving the human element of hospitality. In his role as GM of Food & Beverage for Sage Restaurant Group, Jeff oversees Urban Farmer and Departure Restaurant and Lounge at The Nines Hotel, a LEED certified property in Portland, OR. He loves teaching and using technology to provide an enhanced guest experience.

Jeff’s passion for food transparency and creating sustainable food systems has led him to collaborate with a more diverse set of academics and scientists to better understand food for tomorrow. Jeff and his team have an indoor mushroom incubator, a rooftop garden, and an apiary, and he has built out an underground food lab below the hotel where there are over 100 different types of plants, vegetables, and fruits grown in aeroponics, aquaponics, and hydroponic growing systems.

After earning a degree in Hotel, Restaurant, Travel & Administration from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Brown launched his career with Marriott International in Boston. He went on to be the GM at Morton’s The Steakhouse and then the Area Director of Operations for Kimpton Hotels and Resorts in San Diego.

We’re excited to host the pre-party for CyborgCamp 2018 at a local event space (Get your ticket for details!) We’ll have four local musical performances, each with their own unique use of technology. Doors will open at 7pm!

8:00pm // Missionandry

8:30pm // Body Shame

Body Shame’s self titled debut was released to critical acclaim (ranked 8 in the Top Ten Albums of 2015 by Oregon Music News and number 68 on Tabs Out’s Top 200 Tapes of 2015 list) and became one of SDM Records fastest selling releases.

Having perfected a sought after live performance style, Body Shame has been continually gigging in the Portland area and has been frequently included in such popular showcases as Volt Divers, Cult of Volt, Live in the Depths, and The Creative Music Guild: Outset Series.

9-10pm // Reliqs

Reliqs is all about the future of sound and how we might experience it on faraway shores. Reese Bowes is an industrial designer, multimedia artist, DJ, sound designer, and percussionist.

Hailing from South Africa, Reliqs’ work is influenced by many genres: IDM, Jazz, Breakbeat, Drum and Bass, Ambient, Post-Rock, and Turntablism to name a few.

Klint Finley is a writer, journalist, and game designer based in Portland, Oregon. He’s spent the past six years as a reporter for WIRED, where he’s covered topics ranging from net neutrality to artificial intelligence to decentralized internet platforms. He’ll be speaking about the secret corporate bot wars waging behind the scenes of the internet, and how your phone might have already been conscripted into the battle.

FuturePrairie Podcast
FuturePrairie will run a tea bar at CyborgCamp! They are looking for participants to interview about the future!

FuturePrairie is a podcast about futurism run by Joni Whitworth. The show interviews scientists, creatives and techies about the future. You can read more about the project here: https://www.futureprairie.com and hear the latest episodes on iTunes or SoundCloud here: https://soundcloud.com/futureprairie/sets Check out @FuturePrairie on Twitter for more!

Blaze Streaming Media
Blaze Streaming Media delivers Internet video production to the event industry and is one of the original livestream providers for CyborgCamp! We’re so excited to have the team back and Livestreaming the event! If you’re looking for an awesoem livestreaming team, consider hiring Blaze Streaming! They’re done amazing work for O’Reilly and other large conferences!

We’re excited to announce that Prof. Deborah Heath will be joining us for a short morning talk at CyborgCamp Portland! Heath is interested in cyborgs, food and epigenetics.

She participated in midwifing cyborg anthropology, and attended the Cyborg Anthropology seminar in Santa Fe, NM that led to the book Cyborgs & Citadels. For several years she followed the human and nonhuman alliances involved in genetic knowledge production [cf: Genetic Nature/Culture, Univ. of California Press. Currently she is captivated by the techne and technoscience of food and drink, including the science and rhetoric of the foie gras controversy.

Deborah Heath is a Professor of Anthropology at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. She earned her Ph.D. in 1988 at Johns Hopkins University, her M.A. University of Minnesota at Minneapolis–St. Paul, and her B.A. at Reed College.